It’s always a good thing when a business and its employees feel the pressure to justify itself/themselves every day.

No one will miss the days of cheap paper. Imagine walking into a bookstore and knowing that every book on the shelves survived a bruising struggle for its own existence, and that the literary industry felt it was so damn good, they had to print it — expensive paper be damned.

And when I say advertising, I don’t just mean the low-production slideshows that they do, before the scheduled movie start time, when the lights are still on. I am talking about the 2-minute “mini-movies” that play, after the theatre is dark, which advertise cola, cars, and cell phones.

It would even be one thing, if they played those ads before the movie started. But no, those ads play after the scheduled/posted movie start time. So the movie theatre has ensured that everyone has arrived and is in their seats. Nobody wants to play the “oh, I’ll just arrive 10 minutes late and thereby skip the commercials” game, because you know that all the other schlubs are going to believe what they read and show up at what the movie theatre says is the start time — so you have to show up then, too, to get at least a semi-decent seat.

Is my movie theatre ticket price any cheaper, because I now sit through ten minutes of mini-movie commercials? No. Theatre ticket prices continue their meteoric rise.

Am I really the only one who has misgivings about this stuff? Does everyone else really want this much advertising in their lives, all the time, everywhere? On Google, above urinals, after the scheduled start time of movies that you’ve paid for, on the Tivo pause screen, etc.

On a related note.. y’know how when a television show goes into syndication, often the rebroadcasting channel will cut out portions of the original program so that they can fit more commercials into the same half-hour or hour time slot? Well, a few years ago, the SciFi channel decided to show the original Star Trek series in full, without cutting anything. They hadn’t been broadcast that way in decades.

In order to show the full 1960s hour-long program, but still keep advertisers of today satisfied, the rebroadcast had to run for 1.5 hours. Granted, the rebroadcast was also padded with a couple of three minute original cast member interviews. So it wasn’t all commercials. But those interviews added up to maybe ten minutes, of the 90 minutes, tops.

So what this means is that in the 1960s you could fit the whole Star Trek show, plus all the advertising that you needed to keep Desilu studios and the networks happy and fat, within 60 minutes. Whereas today, even though the costs are lower (yes, you have royalties, but the show has already been produced!) you have to have 80 minutes of programming to keep everyone happy and fat. That means that there are an extra 20 MINUTES of commercials, for every hour on television, as compared to 40 years ago.

20 minutes. Unbelievable.

And were it only television, that would be one thing. But again, it’s also movie theatres, and urinals, and google and.. and..

My point was this: We’ve reached the point where pirating movies is a shockingly easy thing to do, and you can actually see some films for free on your home computer before you can even see them in theaters. However, I still prefer shelling out the $10 to go see a film in theaters because it’s just such a different experience from watching a movie at home, and I value that experience. Because I think others share my feelings, movie theaters are starting to realize that they’re no longer just selling a movie, they’re actually selling the entire experience. (Which is also why I think things like 3D movies and IMAX will continue to well even as more and more people stream their films from Netflix or download them from iTunes.)

Taking this idea and applying it to printed media, I think magazines, books and newspapers need to realize that they’re not just selling their written work, they’re actually selling the entire experience of interacting with their content. Sure, you can read much of the same information you’d find in Wired on a number of different tech blogs on a daily basis, but there’s just something about a magazine or a newspaper that changes the way you interact with the information inside.

Like you, I’m having a tough time finding a firm theme for this idea just yet, but I think the general idea is that media companies need to start thinking about the product they sell as an entire experience, rather than just as a piece of media.

I’m fine with your thesis — the digital world does need digital “book” publishers.

Where I grow weary is in the business model: ads. Because FM is also an ad network/platform, correct?

The soul of print was storytelling, you say. I agree. And that storytelling soul does not die, just because the medium changes. I also agree. Where it dies is when you intersperse that storytelling with other stories (ads), not integral to the fabric of the original story that you are telling.

With a book, I could walk in to the store, plop down cash, and walk out with a story. And then spend the rest of the rainy weekend enjoying the tale woven for me by the author with nothing else getting in the way. I could exchange real cash for real services (or, at least a service.. storytelling.. in the form of a good.. a book). But it was a straightforward trade that I could make, without any interference from outside “stories”.

But now if every story is now going to be interrupted by an advertisement, then you are doing more than just being a publisher for digital storytelling. You’re intruding upon those stories in a way that did not happen with books. You’re changing the ability of those stories to shine forth, unfettered and uncomplicated by competing messages.

Non?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for your vision, broadly speaking. I agree that traditional publishing is wasteful. I do think there should be more transition. I just don’t believe ads should be the vehicle for this transition. Can it be possible for FM to be a digital publisher, but still rely on a direct party-to-party exchange of goods and services.. money exchanged for storytelling?